The availability of computer networks has become increasingly widespread, enabling people to access enormous quantities of information. Computer networks, such as the Internet, provide the ability to connect a computer user to numerous sources of information. As a result, people can obtain information about any number of things, including products, services and events.
While having access to a vast network of information, consumers that are searching for particular information are increasingly exposed to more and more amounts of data, much of which is extraneous. To find desired information, users may spend a great deal of time generating search queries and analyzing the results.
To aid users more quickly to find information that can be characterized by one or more numeric dimensions, it is known to include “sliders” in an interface of a search system. A slider is a control through which a user may specify a range of values that acts as a filter on search results. The search system will only return items from a data set generated in response to a search query when the items have a value for the dimension that falls within the range specified by the slider. For example, information about products for sale may include a dimension reflecting a price. By adjusting a slider associated with the price dimension, a user can cause the search system to limit results returned in response to a search query to only items having a price within the range specified by the slider. If items in a dataset can be characterized by multiple numeric dimensions, the search system may present multiple sliders.
To aid a user in setting values of sliders, it is known to display a data distribution along the slider. The distribution indicates, in graphical form, the number of items in the data set having specific values for the dimension.